Roosevelt Week

"I must frankly state that I consider that the proposed amendment would be impracticable in its application and incompatible with our representative form of government.

"Our Government is conducted by the people through representatives of their own choosing. It was with singular unanimity that the founders of the Republic agreed upon such free and representative form of government as the only practical means of government by the people.

"Such an amendment to the Constitution as that proposed would cripple any President in his conduct of our foreign relations, and it would encourage other nations to believe that they could violate American rights with impunity."

Such were the words Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote to Speaker William Bankhead, such the words Speaker Bankhead read to the House just before it voted on the Ludlow Resolution, calling for a national referendum before declaring war. The letter served its purpose perfectly. The resolution, brought up at the height of the Panay crisis (TIME, Dec. 27), was sent back to committee, presumably to stay, by a vote of 209-to-188.

P: Governors of nine southeastern States (White of Mississippi, Leche of Louisiana, Chandler of Kentucky, Cone of Florida, Browning of Tennessee, Hoey of N. C., Johnston of S. C., Rivers of Georgia and Graves of Alabama 1 year ago banded together in a loosely formed "conference" to attract new industries to the South-- principally by advertising their States and getting the ICC to fix lower Southern freight rates. Last week, Franklin Roosevelt looked up from his desk to see the smiling faces of seven of the Governors* plus those of his old friends, former Governor Oliver Max Gardner of North Carolina (now a politico-lawyer in Washington) and former Assistant Secretary of Treasury Lawrence Wood ("Chip") Robert Jr. (now promoter of the Governors' conference). Shortly after the visitors emerged to let cameramen snap nine of the best political faces in the South (see cut), the White House issued the text of a resolution signed by the Governors endorsing "a floor for wages and a ceiling for hours." Since the Southern bloc in the House defeated the Wages & Hours Bill last month, some newshawks jumped at the conclusion that the President and Governors had made a deal, they to furnish Southern support for Wages & Hours, he to get them lower freight rates. If any such deal was made, it did not seem likely to succeed. The Southern Governors cannot speak for their Congressmen any more than the President can speak for the ICC, but both sides may well have expressed their good intentions and hoped for the best.

P: In Franklin Roosevelt's second-floor study a seascape which has long hung above the Presidential chair was last week replaced by a full-length, life-sized portrait of John Paul Jones, whose most famed words were "I've just begun to fight."

-Governors White & Chandler were absent.

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